riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Flower Festival Celebration
when: April 2nd - April 15th
where: In several different locations in the downtown area of the Inhabited City.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

flower festival

In the days leading up to April 2nd, residents new and old may notice advertising around the city, everywhere from digital screens to paper flyers pasted on blank walls, all advertising an upcoming holiday: The Flower Festival. Celebrating springtime, beauty, joy, and togetherness, the festival heavily features floral themes and dancing. The advertising mentions that on April 10th, a paid holiday, there will be a Blossom Picnic, as well as lists of various public dances at clubs or other open venues, and adult raves.

a celebration of spring

The Flower Festival's main event is the Blossom Picnic on April 10th, but it also features traditions of sharing food and drink, and dancing that span over the course of the whole two weeks. There are a large variety of events going on throughout the city, from dancing lessons in any wide variety of traditional dances, to old-fashioned sock hops, to adult raves complete with mild party drugs. Feel free to use the prompts below or create your own event at any point during the festival, and if your character creates an event and hosts it in a top-level, you can submit that thread for extra bonus points.

i. blossom picnic

The main event that kicks off the second week of the Flower Festival is the Blossom Picnic on April 10th. A relaxed and low-key event, it draws several thousand people every year to the spacious Riverview Central Park, where there is a generous lawn lined with various blossoming trees, and families, found families, lovers, and groups of friends are encouraged to lay out a picnic blanket and share food. There will be live bands playing (but not loudly enough to distract from conversation and peacefully watching the petals flutter in the wind), a variety of demonstrations of traditional cultural dances from many different realities and planets, and a ton of ice cream vendors. This is an excellent festival not only for celebrating togetherness with the people who are already important, but for mingling and making new friends.

Characters may either pack their own lunches or they can purchase pre-packed Blossom Festival lunches. Stores and street markets are carrying a wide variety of specialty food that is only available at this time of year - predominantly pastries, an assortment of types of candies, and ice cream treats all in various floral flavors, as well as a sort of ambrosia salad based around a sweet rose-flavored cream and a native fruit that is bright green and tastes like a combination of peach and citrus.

ii. dancing lessons

Starting on April 2nd, there will be dancing lessons offered almost everywhere you look! From partner dances to group dances to line dances; sexy and sensual or innocent and childlike - almost any type of dance you can imagine is represented, from any reality or planet that has people in Riverview Quarantine.

Additionally, the Riverview Central Community Center has multiple rooms blocked off so anyone who knows a dance from home can teach it to others in their community - sharing is caring, after all. Characters are welcome to block off one of these rooms and offer lessons in any dance they happen to know from home (and these sorts of thread starters would be eligible for the mingle AC Point bonus)!

iii. flower festival dancing

This is pretty simply what it says on the tin - in almost every club, community center, or other public space, there will be dancing at almost all hours of the day or night, formal and informal. Musicians bring out their instruments and play in the street for demonstrations of cultural dances and music at the same time as clubs are offering VIP cover charges for exclusive dances, and you can find anything in between.

There are also many low-cover-charge raves that allow under-18s so younger characters can stay up all night and dance like crazy. The legal drinking age in Riverview Quarantine is 14, and so anyone over 14 can enter and indulge in a few drinks, dancing, and playing tag with a non-intoxicating version of the colored powder featured at the adult raves. There is copious amounts of security on site to ensure that everyone is safe, as well as nurses and off-duty police officers to offer advice or care for anyone who overindulges out of lack of experience.

Grab a partner, a group of friends, or just cruise and mingle the various dancing events.

Characters may also notice that most of the street markets and clothing shops are offering clothing that features floral patterns, flowers as accessories, and that show a lot of skin - for men, women, and anyone in between!

iv. adult raves

Advertised on flyers and digital screens around the city, made to pop as if they were under blacklight, is a series of adult raves that are happening in various large empty warehouse spaces around the city, including one that is listed as the danger rave and hosted in an abandoned factory outside the inhabited city walls. With bouncers at the door to ensure that anyone entering is 18+, the raves are comfortably adult in nature. Clothing is optional, showing skin is encouraged, and there are a lot of neatly tucked away spaces for attendees to get some time alone with one or more than one person, as well as spaces intended for orgies. The atmosphere is sex-positive and non-judgemental, open to any orientation or preference, with various forms of protection available for free, however, to ensure that everyone plays safe there are sober security teams out en masse at all premises to oversee the events.

(CW: DRUG USE) In each location, there is one specific room where attendees can enter, and dance or play tag with brightly colored powder that contains small amounts of a legal party drug commonly available in Riverview, which is absorbed through the skin. Not much more intoxicating than having a few beers, the effects of the drug are a pleasant low-key buzzing euphoria, positive sensitivity to touch, a heightening of desires for intimacy, and a mild lowering of inhibitions. Once a character has been hit with the powder, the color lingers on the skin so other attendees can know who has partaken, but once the powder makes contact with a surface it deactivates, meaning that partakers can safely dance with non-partakers without sharing the intoxicating effects.

Please be sure to warn in subject lines for any threads involving drug use. And remember, there is always security to intervene and make sure everyone is safe.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to set up headers for a communal floor, or threads open to roommates for the purpose of getting to know each other. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set at the Flower Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: third image by Steve Goad; other images found on uncredited on Pinterest or Google images - please let the mod know if you find credit!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Sor Jon, Illya isn't the kind of guy who will let that kind of tone slide without asking any questions about it.]

You don't sound convinced about it.

Because it's too . . . simple. Some parts are easier, but other parts are harder too.

[ A beat as Jon weighs his options. ]

My dad here isn't really my dad. He is, but he comes from, like, a different reality.

[Illya frowns, doing his best to understand. Luckily for him Clark's his roommate and he's meet other people from similar worlds, so he's been told a bit about alternate universes.]

Does he recognize you?

No. All the people I knew . . . they don't know me at all.

[ And it brings a real fear too close to the surface. That Jon has well and truly be erased. ]

Ah. [Now that… makes Illya put a stop to his questioning and actually crouch down to Jon’s eye level. He doesn’t reach for him, because he wouldn’t like if people did that to him so he respects other people’s personal space. But that’s how he tries to do comfort.]

I’m very sorry.

[ Caught off guard, his lower lip trembles as Jon tries to school his expression. He didn't want to cry in front of a stranger. ]

It's not your fault. I'll be okay.

[Illya nods. I know you will. But it's still...

[He pauses for a moment, trying to find the right words for it.] No one should have to go through that. That's why I will never feel completely comfortable in this place.

Who is your father from another universe?

[ Jon hesitates, trying to remember which rule he's meant to follow in this situation. ]

Uhm, his name is Clark Kent. He's a reporter.

[Ah.

Well, of course.]

He's also my roommate.

[ Huh. ]

Does that mean you're friends?

[Ah. Well, they have never used the term before, and Illya isn't exactly known for thinking of everyone as friends. But he can't tell a kid that when he's talking about one of the few links he has to his family in this place, right?]

Yes, we are. He helped me a lot when I got here. [He pauses.] You look a bit like him, now that I think about it.

That's what my mom always says.

[ Like a little Superman, she would say, ruffling his hair. Jon isn't sure what he got from his mom, but his dad always assured him that parts of her were very much there. ]

Dad always likes to help.

[Now that Jon seems like he’s feeling a little better, Illya stands up as he gives him a curt nod.]

The Clark Kent I know does like to help. [He makes a point of referring to him that way, because he isn’t sure if calling him Jon’s father is fair. Illya, who has a plethora of daddy and mommy issues both, would take offense to calling someone his father when he isn’t, not really, or at least not yet. But this is Illya, who isn’t a model of mental health. He wonders how Clark is taking him, and makes a point of talking to him about Jon if he can, see how he’s feeling.]

Is your mother in here as well? Or a version of her.

[ Jon nods, slowly warming up. The earlier sorrow seems to have dissipated into the air. ]

Yeah. They're still in their early phase, so not so mushy all the time. I think.

[ It's still odd, seeing his parents unmarried and figuring things out. Jon isn't naive enough to believe he didn't have anything to do with it and he still feels bad from time to time. ]

[Illya doesn't smile to other adults often, unless he truly honestly likes them. But he doesn't mind smiling to kids, particularly if it will put them at ease, so he gives Jon a little grin.]

I suppose that's a relief. But I am not usually a fan of 'mushy'.

You're not missing much.

[ He scrunches up his face. Jon may be a tactile person by nature but even he has limits. ]

But they're good to me. Even though they didn't have to be.

[Illya nods.] Clark will be good to you, I'm sure. He's a good man.

[He says that in a tone that implies there aren't many good men left, in Illya's opinion. Specially American ones, but he knows better than to say that to an American child. Sorry, Jon, just the prejudice he was raised with.]

I don't know your mother, but if Clark loves her I'm sure she is a great woman.

[ Jon can't interpret that tone so he simply nods, accepting this. ]

She's a famous reporter. My dad is good, but my mom is smart. Probably the smartest person out there.

[He sees that by what it is, a kid talking big about his mother... he wonders just how much of it is true. He's kind of curious about this woman, now, and he wonders if he will get to meet her eventually.]

Good, that is good. Your father is a reporter as well, isn't he? Is that how they met?

[ It takes him a minute. ]

Yeah. They both worked at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. Mom was famous back then too. She won something called a . . . Pulitzer?

[An American prize, because they love competition. But Illya, with a silver medal and plenty of competition trophies definitely finds it hard to judge. If anything, he looks a little impressed. He knows better by now than to mention he’s surprised a woman won it, even if he is. Times have changed, and in some ways for the better.]

That’s pretty impressive. Not everyone can win one of those, as far as I know.

They don't! Also she's written lots of books and ex . . . exposeees.

[ He tried. ]

Once she punched a cop in the face because he was all corrupt and bad. She's helped the police do all kinds of stuff.

[Illya grins at that. In him, that’s pretty much a belly laughter.]

That’s my work in this place, actually. Not punching bad cops in the face, though I suppose I would do that gladly they let me. [Is this where he’s supposed to try to tell the kid violence isn’t bad? Look, his mother obviously knows the value of a well-thrown punch and violence has saved Illya’s life more times that he cares to count. He isn’t going to lie to Jon if his own parents don’t.]

I make sure the police in here isn’t corrupt.

That's a really important job. I'm sure you'll be great at it.

[ Though he wonders how the police function in a place like this, Jon knows they're still important. The laws are always important and shouldn't be broken. ]

[Illya nods solemnly.] I hope so, thank you for your trust.

May I repay you with an ice cream? If your parents say it is okay.

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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